Suicide bomber foiled in Israel

Tracy WilkinsonLos Angeles Times

Published Saturday, February 23, 2002

JERUSALEM -- Shoppers crowding the supermarket in Efrat, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, heard a pop from the bread section Friday morning and then noticed a Palestinian suicide bomber trying to blow himself up.

One of the settlers and a guard quickly whipped out their pistols and shot the man to death, averting what authorities said would have been a disastrous explosion in a market bustling ahead of the Jewish Sabbath.

It was the second time in seven days that a Palestinian had entered a settlement with the purpose of detonating a bomb to kill himself and as many Jews as possible, and it underscored a recent shift by Palestinian militants to focus their attacks on settlers and soldiers inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Later Friday, an Israeli man was shot and killed, presumably by Palestinian gunmen, as he drove on a road north of Jerusalem used by settlers to by-pass Arab villages, the army said.

In a separate incident, a Jewish settler was badly injured by Israeli troops after the man stopped his car and opened fire on what he claimed were Palestinian gunmen. The army said it mistook the settler for a Palestinian and shot him. Troops realizing their mistake later scoured the nearest Palestinian neighborhood and found a fake plastic gun, the army said.

The Efrat bomb incident also exposed flaws in a plan by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to carve out buffer zones throughout the region to divide Israelis and Palestinians. About 200,000 Israeli Jews live in more than 140 settlements scattered throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Sharon has offered no explanation of how a buffer zone can protect settlements if they are left intact.

Sharon reiterated the government's intention to establish "security separation" in a speech to the nation Thursday night. Billed as a major address to his increasingly despondent people, the prime minister's comments were widely condemned Friday from the right, left and center as uninspiring, insufficient and vague at a time when strong leadership is desperately needed.

"The lion that meowed," is how commentator Yoel Marcus put it in a front-page editorial in the influential Haaretz daily.

A poll published Friday in Israel's largest newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, said Sharon's credibility in the eyes of Israelis had plunged from 70 percent in December to 54 percent in February. Until now, Sharon had enjoyed consistently high approval ratings since his landslide election a year ago. With the death toll mounting in a 17-month-old conflict that has already claimed more than 1,100 lives on both sides, confidence in Sharon is clearly slipping.

Palestinian fighters regard settlers and settlements as legitimate targets, along with soldiers, even though many settlers are not armed.

Meanwhile, Harow and other settlers are worried about how the potential suicide bomber entered Efrat, which, like many settlements, is guarded by the Israeli military.Several residents said they believe that the man, later identified as Mohammed Ashimari, 22, from the nearby village of Adoha, was one of dozens of Palestinians who had a permit to enter the settlement as part of a construction crew.

Police said they found a belt of explosives on his body and that he may have also left a separate bomb on a grocery store shelf.